What is Mass Spec ? What is the MASS-FIX blood test?

[Music] what is the mass fix blood test so the mass spectrometry is a way that we can actually break down the proteins and actually detect what is the sequence of amino acids in those in those proteins and from the point of view of the serum M spike we can actually be take the exact mass of that monoclonal protein which then allows us to identify very very small amounts of the monoclonal protein in the serum beyond the resolution of the currently available immuno fixation techniques but it also allows us to specifically identify the monoclonal protein for a given patient so we can distinguish it from a monoclonal protein that may be coming from a monoclonal antibody that is being used for treatment so it's more sensitive and more specific than the current approaches for detecting protein one of my colleagues dave murray brilliant guy came up with this idea that using mass spectrometry one could potentially identify a given patients monoclonal protein by using sort of this very large desktop machine called a MALDI and it basically separates proteins by charge and mass and basically we just you know there's a little bit of work that you do you put it in these little tubes and you put it in a well in the machine and a laser shoots at it and you get these patterns and you can actually identify the monoclonal protein and the really nice thing is that you can identify a specific mass charge we call it of a given patients monoclonal protein and so if they have a G Kappa and they're getting a therapeutic antibody like there are a tumor map we can easily tell the difference in mass charge and discern whether it's the drug versus the patient's protein so when we follow myeloma patients the the workhorses our the serum protein electrophoresis and that is sort of a quantitative assay so somebody says you know my M spike is 2 grams 3 grams whatever you get that off of the s pep but then when you can't really see it anymore or if you want to know exactly what type it is is it an a Kappa G land whatever you do immuno fixation so for us the mass fix is replacing that immuno fixation so we can we do it for saying what is the monoclonal protein and then also is it there or not and it's very very good at finding little monoclonal proteins which is very helpful there are some new methods by which people are looking at the determination of this abnormal proteins one of them the so called mass fix there are more sensitive methods now for measuring proteins and if they come from what we call the field of proteomics and people can take this to much lower concentrations and what you can traditionally do with a protein electrophoresis signal fixation or even the light chain most of this tests are still early on so there are some institutions like me of clinic where this is already being tested it is not a requirement at this point but obviously we're moving in that direction and the reason is it allows you for a deeper level response so as we strive to get into MRD a better and sustained complete responses people will want to have better testing plus there's some other value for this you know as we look at patients who are gonna get monoclonal antibody such as directly mama it cab allows you to the French eat some some of those markers from that protein ID or protein fingerprinting if you may and actually at Mayo now we do we don't even do immuno fixation anymore we're doing just this mass fix because we find that it's more sensitive and more specific than the typical immuno fixation tests we have adopted that at Mayo Clinic Li and you're hoping that over the coming years that will be widely available in the clinical setting so right now it's only being done at the Mayo Clinic and the binding site has licensed the technology from us so they're developing an assay so the binding site makes the free light chain assay that a lot of patients use have run regularly and so it should be available other places certainly you know institutions can get it up and running on their own without it but it'll be kind of like a package that'll be easier that comes with software and so on you [Music]